War crimes in Gaza: Hamas vs Israel

The Palestinians of Gaza know that today, 7 October 2024, the whole world blames them for the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023.

The Palestinians of Gaza also, apparently, have no (living) escape from either Israel or Gaza but the sea of that oft-outlawed slogan: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."

'Never again', the world said after the Jewish Holocaust, making a promise to return the persecuted people to their 'Promised Land'.

For the survivors of the Gaza genocide, there is no promise of rescue or refuge — nor any hope of an end to the 'retribution' in the foreseeable future. Are they surprised? Did they expect any different? Possibly not.

The Palestinians are a people that have lived with Occupation for longer than the 76 years since the 1948 Nakba. For before Israelis, there were Europeans — those same Europeans, those fair-minded English, that saw fit to give them their now neighbour-coloniser.

So, whose is the just cause? Or, at least, the least unjust?

A Reuters report of 1 October 2024 (updated 4 October) lists the many legal cases that have been filed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague over the events of the past year in Gaza and Israel — and increasingly, surrounding territories, including the occupied West Bank, and now Lebanon and Iran.

Before the International Criminal Court (ICC) is the matter of arrest warrants against Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity — right alongside those against two Hamas leaders, members of a militant group that many European and American nations consider terrorist organisations.

But it is not just individuals held responsible per international law...

Israel as a nation collectively faces state responsibility for alleged violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention, another charge under consideration by the ICJ.

While Israel is not an ICC member and does not accept its jurisdiction over itself, Palestine joined the treaty organisation in 2015 — and the court started investigating Israel's alleged crimes in occupied Palestinian territories back in 2021 (for it has jurisdiction thereby over Palestine's space).

Yes, the war crimes in Gaza (and Israel) start well before 7 October 2023. Even 2021 is woefully recent for a reckoning.

The ICJ case against Netanyahu and Gallant was filed in December 2023 by South Africa. It was only as recently as May 2024 that it came to demands of a warrant for systematically depriving the civilians of Gaza of ‘objects indispensable to human survival’ — food, water, medicine and energy, which Gallant has been televised as declaring verboten for Palestine's people.

This charge does not cover the allegations of Israel using the Hannibal directive against its own people. That's a whole other matter.

Yet another matter is the 9,000-plus Palestinians — including women and children — held by Israel since long before 7 October 2023 on suspicion or accusation of presenting a security threat to itself. They are not, however, 'hostages'.

Speaking of which, what of Hamas? Do we not condemn Hamas?

The ICC chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, also called for arrest warrants against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh for, in turn, their alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity — including murder, rape and the taking of hostages in the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood operation.

The case against Haniyeh has since been closed, since he is dead. Deif is reported dead too, though some uncertainty remains.

Meanwhile, though ICC member states are officially required to honour the arrest warrants it issued, the US for one has categorically stated that it would not move to arrest Netanyahu. Indeed, it just hosted him as a speaker at an UN meet in September.

Some have pointed to the United States' own history of settler-colonialism vis-a-vis the First Nations and its parallel with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

At the ICJ, meanwhile, South Africa is to tasked to finish presenting its case against Israel by the end of October.

In the meantime, per the ICJ's orders of January 2024, Israel is/was to ensure that its troops commit no 'genocidal acts' in Palestine. The Court found it 'plausible' that Israel was in violation of the genocide treaty with respect to its treatment of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Of course, Israel was also 'ordered' to immediately halt its Rafah offensive at the time. Of course, that is already water under the bridge and has flowed all the way to the sea and dissipated into the oceans of enormity.

Israel was also to ensure aid and basic food supplies reached Palestinians in Gaza. The compliance with this order might euphemistically be said to be debatable.

And while ICJ member states await a verdict that might be years in the making — for unlike the ICC, the ICJ can impose sanctions on its members for non-compliance, a rather more serious matter for some — the 'conflict' that is surely a collective punishment of Gazans for the crimes of Hamas continues.

There is, also, a third party that many would indict in this conflict. A rather nebulous Hydra, this one: the international media.

And for this one, there is no court of jurisdiction — but that of public opinion in the present, and in some distant future, the judgement of history itself.